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ADDRESS 



MR. ALEXANDER DIMITRY, i«o^ ^b«3> 



THE UNION LITERARY SOCIETY 



WASHINGTON CITY, 



JULY 4, 1839. 



WASHINGTON : 

BLAIR AND RIVES, PRINTERS. 
1839. 



Washington, July 6, 1839. 

Sir: We have the honor to communicate to you the following reso- 
lution, adopted by the Union Literary and Debating Society, and to 
request your compliance with the same : 

^'Resolved, That this Society have been highly gratitied with the 
address delivered bv Mr. Dimitry this day; that it is their desire the 
same should be published ; and that a committee be appointed to com- 
mauicate to Mr. Dimitry this resolution, and request a copy of the 
address for publication." 

We remain, most respectfully, 

Your obedient servants and fellow members, 



Alf.x. Dimitry, Esq. 



T. W. DONOVAN, 

J. DENT, 

THOS. R. HAMPDEN. 



Washington City, July 6, 1839. 

Gentlemen : In compliance with the resolution of the Society, con- 
veyed to me through your note of this date, I have the honor to trans- 
mit to you a copy of the address delivered before them on the 4th 
instant. 

Your obedient servant and fellow member. 



ALEX. DIMITRY. 
Messrs. T. W. Donovan, I 

J. Dent, > Com. U. L. Society. 

Thos. R. Hampden, j 



A D D R K S S . 

Fellow citizens and associates 

of the Union Literary tSocieti/ : 
That an occasional recurrence to first principles of 
action is necessary to the adjustment of our conduct, 
may be laid down as an axiom equally true in 
politics as it is in morality. The influences of time 
but too often obliterate the impressions received from 
early motives, and as frequently leave us without the 
friendly guide that should regulate our actions in life ; 
while, on the contrary, sober and honest examina- 
tions of the original maxims impress us with a deeper 
conviction of their correctness, whether moral or 
pohtical — dispel our irresolutions when v/e doubt, and 
rectify our obliquities where we have erred. Hence 
it is binding on us, periodically, to revive the recol- 
lection of the motives which impelled our forefathers 
to declare their independence, and prompted them to 
effect the revolution. Our duty to ourselves and to 
our country invites us to look back to its rise and 
progress, and to make an application of its principles 
to the government of our actions. A familiarity with 
the means which called us into national existence 
alone can identify us with our national importance, 
and point out the way of guarding our republican 
institutions. The impulse given to civil commotions 
often grows out of the factious spirit of demagogues, 
who speculate on the name of liberty, or the vicissi- 



6 

tildes of revolution. Ours, on the sliglitest view of its 
origin and developement, will prove to have sprung 
out of a purer and a holier source. Ten years before 
British extortions had roused the resentment of tlie 
colonists, Condorcet, with a wonderful prescience of 
coming events, had foretold their schism from the 
step-dame embraces of the metropolis. Indeed, a 
bare advertence to the temper of the human mind, 
betrayed in the restlessness of the eighteenth century, 
and compared vvith the political systems of then 
existing governments, will show that a great revolu- 
tion was infallibly impending over the world. In 
what part of the globe its outbreak could be expected, 
was not sufficiently evident ; but of the imminence of 
a mighty convulsion every thinking mind was satis- 
fied. The absolute monarchies of Europe had reached 
an exorbitance of unlineal power ; and the people were 
every where weary with lavishing life to consolidate 
the ambition of royal despots, and coining their hearts' 
blood to gratify the luxuries of royal paramours. 
Under these circumstances it was easy to foresee that 
some change was inevitable ; while in two ways only 
could its occurrence take place. It was necessary 
that either the people themselves should have asserted 
the principles of nature and of reason, gradually but 
steadily proclaimed by the voice of philosophy ; or, 
that governments should anticipate them, and model 
their policy on the forms of popular opinion. 

To have looked for the latter course would have 
been to have expected an improbability : while the 
corruption, the ignorance, and the perverseness of our 
sometime rulers enforced a resort to the right of 



revolution. Hurling the memorable Oeclciratioii ot 
Independence, to which you have just hstened. as a 
war defiance to the monarchs of earth, our ancestors 
summoned their oppressors to the arbitrament of their 
wrongs ; and the full and rapid triumph of rational 
liberty avenged the abuses of centuries, and settled the 
rights of mankind. Had not the previously teeming 
causes, to which I liave referred, hastened the maturity 
of freedom, bare common sense had taught the colonists 
that Englishmen, of cis-atlantic birth, derived from the 
charter of nature precisely the same rights as those of 
biiiglisbmen born under the meridian of Greenwich ; 
and that a ditierence of seventy degrees of longitude 
could neither abrogate moral obligations, nor defeat 
natural rights. Better than their European fathers 
were they, perchance, acquainted with the sacredness 
of those rights, common to every individual of the 
hmnan species, and among which they reckoned the 
essential one of rejecting laws in which they had 
not concurred, and withholdmg taxes unsanctioned by 
their assent. The ministry, in fact, would seem to 
have shaped their measures, in regard to this country, 
on the supposition that Heaven had created America 
like Asia, for the peculiar use and exclusive profit of 
British aristocracy ; and prepared, beyond the western 
seas, a vassal people, whom they could wield, in their 
own good time, to subdue the liberties of European 
England. They becked to the easy and venal repre- 
sentatives of the English people ; and the colonies were 
insulted by the violation of their laws, and ground 
down by the imposition of a shameful tribute. Re- 
pelling the insult with a spirit slow to anger, but 



8 

tierce in its awakened wruth, our ancestors solemnly 
declared iheir independence lioni the rule of England. 
But not limited to this conntry only were the 
eflects of that noble declaration. It burst, with the 
crash of a thunder-bolt, over the heads of kings, 
striking terror to their souls ; while, to the nations of 
earth, it came over the ocean like a dithyramb, wild 
and unexpected, yet breathing of freedom and hope. 
It was at once the judgement and the sentence of 
the strong-handed and powerful of the world. It told 
the selfish and corrupt society of the day that the 
measure of its wrongs had been filled, and its usages 
and laws forever abjured. Then was seen, for the 
first time, a people casting off the yoke of oppression, 
and peacefully modelling such institutions and laws 
as were best conducive to their happiness — institutions 
based on the solemn acknowledgement of the natural 
rights of man, and framed for the uninterrupted pre- 
servation of those sacred rights. In the war which 
broke out between two of the most enlightened nations, 
one of them defended the imprescriptible rights of man- 
kind ; while the other opposed the impious doctrine, 
which subjects those rights to prescription, political 
figments, and conventional rules. That great and 
novel cause was pleaded before the tribunal of public 
opinion, in the presence of assembled Europe. The 
rights of man were victoriously sustained by our fore- 
fathers in many a well-fought and triumphant battle- 
field ; and as highly developed ui masterly writings, 
which, circulating from the Ural mountains to the 
chain of the Algarvian hills — from the shores of Ice- 
land to the furthermost point of Sicily — reached the 



most degraded and enslaved of the nations of the old 
continent. The spectres of human beings who fam- 
ished in the midst of luxury and opulence — the artisan, 
who wasted his muscle to strengthen the already strong- 
hand of power — the peasant, who fertilized the furrow 
that yielded no harvest for him and his — the very serf, 
who nightly pillowed his head on his fetters — all 
started to hear that they had rights ; and that, across 
the waters of the Atlantic, there was a young and 
generous people who dared vindicate and defend those 
rights against the aggressions of a gigantic power. 
Single-handed at first, unprovided with any of thei 
appliances of war, they threw the energies of a holy 
cause and the resolves of the purest patriotism in a 
contest which challenges the annals of the world for 
a parallel. Yet, in order that no virtue should be 
wanting in the consecration of that hallowed strug- 
gle, they avoided the improvidence and rashness that 
broke forth into sudden insurrection, and exhibited 
to the world the calm and unanimous resistance of 
a people, mildly, though firmly, opposing the arro- 
gations of power. They bore with the vexations 
of England's mercenaries as long as they could be 
endured, and held bacii: the blow of recrimination ; 
sueing, but vainly sueing, for a redress of their 
grievances. It was not till the moan of despair cried 
to heaven for vengeance — till the winds of our hem- 
isphere were burdened with the wail of suffering, 
and until the danger of obedience became greater 
than the worst evils of war, that they were compelled 
to appeal to the God of battles. This was the last 
Una of the patience of the colonists, and of the iiii- 
2 



10 

prudence of their ruler. The abuse of the power 
vested in one individual clashed harshly with the 
general idea of justice and the natural rights of man, 
and led the people to prefer a legal form of govern- 
ment to the will of delegated task masters. 

Since the triumph of our revolution, European 
speculatists, in their fanciful theories, have endeavored 
to prove that the conduct of the colonists was illegal, 
in forswearing their allegiance to Britain, and resisting 
the assumed authority of Parliament. The attempt, it 
must be confessed, comes rather unseasonably ; and 
might, at best, were we so disposed, serve to point a 
sarcasm. But it is an undeniable fact — and all the 
fallacies of theorists cannot undo it — that the people of 
this comitry were not instantly under the jurisdiction 
of Parliament. They received from the King of Eng- 
land the charter of their colonial institutions. By 
mutual consent they organized their own assemblies — 
invested them with all the powers of legislation for 
their domestic government ; while their decrees were 
sanctioned by the King, or ratified by his immediate 
representatives, the Governors of the provincial settle- 
ments. The only authority which Parliament could 
ever claim, in relation to this country, was the power 
of enacting laws restrictive of its commerce. Beyond 
this, it had nothing to enforce. By a clause which, if 
I mistake not, appears in every colonial charter, the 
emigrants to this country were to enjoy all the rights 
of Englishmen. Now, the first and most essential right 
of the English people is a disposal of their property, or, 
that which is equivalent to it, the enactment of laws 
affecting property through the medium of their own 



11 

representatives. To the House of Commons alone, 
independent of the House of Lords, belonged the power 
of appropriating revenue for the wants of the Govern- 
ment, and, of course, of imposing and regulating tax- 
ation. This same privilege was, therefore, exclusively 
vested in the Commons of America — the immediate 
representatives of this country. These representatives 
were the members of their own Legislatures, elected by 
themselves; and, consequently, in their legislative bodies 
alone existed the right of creating imposts. The 
British House of Commons possessed no control over 
the domestic economy of the colonial Government; 
its power expired with the limitations of its navigation 
and trade. Even Junius himself, the warmest and 
ablest advocate of the Grenville administration, tells us 
that the right of taxation assumed by Parliament was, 
at first, a right merely speculative — a right not intended 
to be exercised. Indeed! aright merely speculative — 
a right never to be exercised ! A doctrine so un- 
intelligible, so closely verging on absurdity, requires 
no comment, and almost demands an apology for its 
introduction. 

From this condensed statement of the question it 
follows that this claim of Parliamentary supremacy, 
against the will of the colonists, was equivalent to 
an extortion, in resisting and resenting which our 
ancestors were fully justifiable, both in a political and 
moral relation. After years of remonstrance and efforts 
towards conciliation, feehng justified in annulling a 
compact unobserved by the other party, the inhabitants 
of this country, goaded to insurrection by the wanton- 
ness of royal hirelings, arose in their might to chastise 



12 

the insolence of a licentious soldiery. With a cause, 
the justice of which could silence the scruples of the 
most conscientious asserter of " the right divine and 
sacredness of kings," they nerved themselves for the 
fight, and entered the lists mailed in a panoply that 
mocked defeat, and armed with weapons which insured 
success. With a virtuous and unshaken trust in their 
God, they rushed to battle, and the Almighty showered 
his blessings on the combined endeavors of virtue, 
justice, and liberty. One proud trait marks their con- 
duct througrhout the course of a conflict alike 
unmatched by the severity of its privations and the 
number of its sacrifices. With a singleness of purpose 
which nothing could swerve, they rushed to the con- 
test to right the wrong, and redeem the pledge which 
they had given to mankind. And nobly, too, did they 
redeem that pledge! Even while the present was 
bristling with danger, and the future lowering with 
death, the might of freedom's sword, unbroken and 
unresting, was still seen in our fathers' hands, smiting 
the scale of eternal justice, and swaying its beam on 
the side of humanity and truth. 

Of the close of that glorious struggle I need not 
discourse. Oftiraes does "narrative old age" while 
ftway the watches of the winter night, and fire the 
ds^y dreams of our youth, with the recital of its thriUing 
perils, its unmeasured hardships, and its final triumph ! 
The scattered remnants of that maniple of heroes, 
prouder than any Macedonian phalanx or Roman 
cplj^^rt — the truly immortal battalion, who reared a 
raimpart of stout and undaunted hearts around the 
trampled rights of our land — are fast sinking into the 



13 

grave ; and, as they totter to its endless rest, like the 
old legionaries of Rome, flinging a last farewell to their 
idol — morituri te salutant — they turn to the purer 
image of our country, and hail it with a dying breath ! 

We have, so far, in acquitting ourselves of our duty, 
confined these remarks to the past of our country, and 
the glorious achievement of the revolution. We trust 
that it will not be deemed inappropriate to the occasion 
on which we have met, to look into the probable social 
results of that revolution, and the future effects that are 
likely to flow from the substitution, for the doctrine of 
divine right under which the monarch rules, of the 
doctrine of revolutionary right, in virtue of which the 
people enact their own laws. The sovereignty of the 
people is the one positive and essential feature in our 
Declaration of Independence ; and, by the triumphant 
manner in which it was vindicated, and the practical 
purposes to which it has been applied, it is, henceforth, 
an established and indefeasible fact. The cotemporary 
of truth, it is the loftiest idea that can have currency on 
earth, and is at once the living and human translation 
of the omnipotence of God himself. Wide of being, 
in its essence, as some have asserted, the brute triumph 
of physical force concentrated in majorities, it involves 
the uiost philosophic doctrines to which the mind 
can direct its speculations. It cannot, and shall not, 
pass away from the earth until the Creator shall have 
dissolved its elements, and recalled its tenants to hi$ 
own eternity ! Such is the great truth developed, 
and the firm conviction secured by the trials and 
sacrifices of our ancestry. Under its influences we 
feel the high-toi>ed dignity of am nature ; we give to 



14 

the winds the fallacies of the sophist ; and bnng lo 
the people soundly vigorous and nobly plebeian ideas, 
like trusty weapons, to wage the war of freedom 
against the assailers of its rights. I say sound and 
vigorous ideas ; because, on their progress rests the 
progress of human destinies. To look at the mere 
superficies, or glance at the first appearance of things, 
we might, perhaps, be led into a doubt of the effective 
influence and continuous presence of truth. But take 
human society in its essence and all its bearings ; 
delve into its living and real powers ; dwell on the 
universal and secular labors of man's intellect ; place on 
the summit the sovereignty of the people as the very 
perfection of the whole ; and we will find in the 
picture a support for every daring, a reward for every 
sacrifice, and a reason for every hope. Our general 
feelings, our morals, the very essence of our institutions 
and laws, and, in some respects, our arts and sciences, 
are all logical deductions of the principle. As there 
is nothing in man, as a social being, but what is 
directly or indirectly derived from it ; so at no period 
can there be any real and salutary improvement of the 
individual or of society, unconnected with its exercise. 
We are, therefore, satisfied in our own minds — though 
the contrary be maintained by the gifted historian of 
modern civilization* — that, far from being a stranger 
to the social revolution, which is teeming in the womb 
of futurity, that principle is its prime mover and cause. 
It claims, now and henceforth, the improvement of 
the condition of the masses, to whom ignorance, toil, 
sufiering, and want, seem to have been allotted as 
their share of our splendid social compacts. 

♦Guizot, Hist, de la Civilization moderne. 



15 

It solicits laws based upon the religion of equal rights, 
if not protective of labor against capital, and productive 
of a more equitable distribution of the common wealth. 

It requires that the few shall not wield, to their 
almost exclusive interest, the administration of the 
interests of all. 

It demands that a flagrant system of legislation — 
the eternal refuge of privileges, which we vainly try 
to disguise under lying names — be not pursued to 
the verge which makes " the rich richer, and poorer 
the poor." 

It entreats that the sum of happiness and comfort, 
destined by the common Author for all his children, be 
equally accessible to all; and that the fraternity of man- 
kind cease to be a vvord of empty sound and galling 
derision. 

We must not, we dare not, deceive ourselves on 
this head. The sovereignty of the people is not 
merely the source of political power : it is also one 
of the formulas of civil society ; better calculated than 
any other to express the dignity of our nature, and 
secure the welfare of our kind. Every society owes 
to its worthy members the bread of the body — that is, 
the means of labor ; and, to all, the bread of the spirit- 
in other words, the means of acquiring knowledge. 
All laws, or systems of law, therefore, which, in their 
direct or indirect, remote or proximate tendency, shall 
not be framed for the improvement of mankind, or 
shall not have " the greatest good of the greatest 
number" for their end, are evil and anti-social laws; 
laws without principle, cohesion, or morality. 

The fervor of our desires may warp our judgment 



16 

as to the indication of the times ; yet, in the midst 
of the indecisions which characterize our condition, 
we cannot but mark the workings of a spirit, through 
the artificial strata of society, which inspires hope 
for the present, and promises better for the future. 
Knowledge is daily penetrating the ranks of the 
people ; its diffusion has never been more widely 
spread. Where your partial legislation has not 
sufficiently provided for it, the desire of the masses 
grasps at it with intuitive energy. Knowledge, which, 
from the origin of society, had passed from the hands 
of privileged men to the mysterious shades of temples 
and sanctuaries ; which had to be snatched away 
from its religious obscurity, by the daring of a few 
gifted minds ; which, once the property of the school 
for centuries, after having been that of the priesthood, 
settled down into a prerogative of the aristocracy ; 
knowledge is now diffused over the world — attainable 
by all, assuming all forms, and infusing itself into 
all minds. Despots themselves appeal to its powers 
for the maintenance of their sway ; and the absolute- 
monarchs of Prussia and Austria have established 
broad systems of education, perverted from its nobler 
uses, to inculcate, in the minds of the people, the 
doctrines of passive obedience to their masters' will. 
But, inasmuch as our favored country is concerned, 
this growing popularity of knowledge, after the only 
truly popular revolution which has ever occurred, is 
a blessing of Providence : it involves a link of cause 
and effect, which it is important to trace out. 

With the sum of human ideas, hoarded duHrig 
three hundred years of intellectual travail, our fore- 



It 

fathers purchased and paid our poUtical emancipation. 
The legislative labors of the convention are, properly 
speaking, the translation and fusion of previously ac- 
quired political notions into a new form of polity. Our 
Declaration of Independence having reinstated the 
power and the dignity of the people, it sent that people 
back to the progressive school of human knowledge and 
human freedom. For the last twenty years we have 
had an almost imperceptible change in the ideas of 
society. Theories, all growing to a wider diffusion 
of freedom, have resumed their course and their 
experiments, while the knowledge that has been 
acquired tends to a more universal spread. On one 
side the theorist, the pioneer in the march of 
intellect, tests new combinations of truth ; and the 
people, on the other, achieve the mastery of already 
recognized doctrines. These are parallel and equally 
necessary operations of the mind, through the agency 
of which a greater number of individuals will be 
called to participate in the blessings of science. But, 
the sway of society belonging almost exclusively to 
intellect, we are urged to the conclusion that the 
social evolutions must necessarily follow the intellec- 
tual developement. As man, in his individual capacity, 
is sovereign through the means of knowledge ; so are 
the people, in their collective body, through the instru- 
mentality of the same law : for the sovereignty of 
the people, after all, is but the sovereignly of the 
human mind, portioned among a majority, which 
daily becomes more enlightened, and which increases 
as it is better informed. 
3 



18 

Under the principles deduced from the dogma of 
ihe sovereignty of the people, and the perfectibility 
of the mind, the action of the present and future 
generations cannot be mistaken. They arc bound 
to tlie performance of a holy mission, whose tendency 
is to throw off the rubbish of worn-out doctrines, in- 
crusted, by ages of fraud, into the natural and political 
rights of man ; and the crowning developement of 
which must be the sure, however gradual, reconstruc- 
tion of the social fabric, out of new elements of 
sociality. Indeed, that we have reached one of those 
periods of transition and renovation, is what few, of 
unbiassed judgment, can rationally call in question. 
At no epoch, since the diiiusion of the redeeming 
truths of Christianity, has there existed so keen a 
presentiment — so general a conviction of some great 
and instant change. Some view it with a foreboding 
of awe, and others with an aspiration of hope ; 
because, as they turn to the future, or the past, they 
see images of life or death reflected in its spectrum. 
But all believe in — man}'-, no doubt, wish for — a deep 
change and a material reform. It may, therefore, be 
accomplished. We would vainly attempt to arrest 
the passing hour, chain the pinion of time with 
the improvements which it bears, or poise ourselves 
in the midst of the present social chaos. There is, in 
the essence of human events, a sovereign and irrevo- 
cable necessity superior to all earthly power. Of 
what avail will be our puny arm in rolling back the 
torrent of intellectual ideas and human progress, 
scooping their way along the steep of centuries, and 
wending to that illimitable ocean which will eventu- 



19 

ally absorb all created things? Aii irresistible force 
propels mankind ; and, whatever we may do, they 
will reach their foreshaped destinies. None shall, 
none can, check them on the highway of ages ; for on 
that highway, man, the unwearied traveller, gradu- 
ally and progressively prepares his course for eternity. 

Yet fatal as this tendency may be, the concurrence 
of man is required in all that is to be achieved for his 
welfare. The virtuous and the good themselves — those, 
at least, who are held as such in common opinion — are 
liable to many and strange illusions on this subject. 
They sometimes attempt to convince themselves that, 
after all, matters are not as deplorable as they seem; 
that there is little danger and too m.uch alarm; in order 
that they may thence fashion a pretext for their guilty 
indifference. At other times, they exaggerate the dan- 
gers of so unsettled a state of things, in order to infer 
either the vanity of human efforts at improvement, or 
the necessity of strong and coercive governments. At 
others again they agree on the urgency of applying a 
final remedy to the evil. But the duty is not theirs; 
they are not delegated to reform abuses or hasten im- 
provements ; they wrap themselves in senseless apathy, 
and look from afar on the structure, ravaged by the 
conflagration, or uprooted by the storm. 

To oppose the latent and nobler energies of our na- 
ture, after this manner, is to be guilty of the veriest 
improvidence. Can it be supposed that its forward 
march can be beaten back by the opposition of a 
mere power of inertness ? Has society, at any period 
since the Christian era, been known to absolutely 
retrograde? Is not its life progressive? And what 



20 

is that life, but the innate power which compels it 
incessantly to modify itself on the type of a more 
perfect order of tilings, from which it expects the re- 
medy of crymg evils and the advent of a greater weal, 
to which it invincibly aspires? The connexion be- 
tween the s^ood expected and the evils to be undone, 
and the speculative principles which guide society in 
the selection of the means to reach that end, may, with 
a show of reason, be conti^sted by some. It may be 
objected, that, proceeding on false notions and Utopian 
grounds, society, instead of improving, would iujpair 
its condition by such a course. To this society ofters 
a fact in answer. It has. no doubt, suffered from its 
own heaving efforts. The war which we, ourselves, 
have waged against the abuses of the past, has, no 
doubt, and in other lands, produced evils which we 
cannot deny. But has society been deceived as to the 
legitimate and healthy results of that war? Compare, 
not to go farther, the state of the world previous to our 
Declaration of Independence, with the present condition 
of the people, and let any one maintain that nothing 
has been achieved, or that the conquest has been fatal 
to mankind ! They have conquered an inheritance of 
freedom and equality ; they have opened a wider circle 
to commercial, manufacturing, and mechanical activity. 
The light and property of science, descending to a 
greater number than ever they had before informed, 
have raised the masses in the scale of human impor- 
tance. Is this nothing? It is not, we confess, what 
they have a further right to expect ; but that which 
lurks beyond, and which, therefore, is the Object of an 
unquenched desire — in what direction shall it be looked 



SI 

for 1 Do we fancy that we can ever persuade the peo- 
ple that, in order to find that, they must retrace their 
footsteps to the starting point ? Ah ! fellow members, 
that ground is furrowed by a thousand crimson 
streams, fed and swollen by the life-blood of martyrs 
and victims ; and the air is groaning with the still lin- 
gering and unexpended shrieks of human agony. The 
shackles of the past, imposed and rivetted by brutal 
force, we can all understand ; but the hope of bondage, 
wilfully courted and gladly welcomed, has never entered 
the heart of even the most senseless of tyrants. Hold 
out to the eagle, hovering in the freedom of his native 
air, the chain which he has but now shivered, and see 
whether the noble bird will stoop his proud pinion for 
the ignoble lure ! 

It is a constant law, founded on the very nature of 
thinofs, in the intellectual and the social, as well as in 
the physical, world, that each (act proceeds from another 
one, according to a certain connexion, which links 
thought to thought and deed to deed, so that what 
precedes is the logical ratio and the efficient cause 
of what follows. This is the sovereign law, which for- 
bids society to retrace its course through the previous 
conditions which once marked the successive phases of 
its growth. It is, therefore, as impossible that nations 
should abandon their notions of right and wrong, of 
justice and injustice, for the imperfect ones which were 
sufficient for them in their infancy, as it would be im- 
possible for the whole of creation to run up the stream 
of time, and return to its very origin. Thus, in the 
act that carries society forward, in the instincts, the 
sentiments, and in the substance of the general idea* 



22 

that direct its course, nothing- can be changed without 
the disturbance of an organic law. 

To maintain the contrary either in practice or theory; 
to attempt to perpetuate the fatal influence of the 
maxims which have hitherto swayed the world; to 
contrive the dependance of civil order or physical 
power instead of liberty and equality, its natural bases, 
is to resist the sovereignty of the people, and vainly 
to combat that which no influence can countervail. 
Those whom evil passions could madden into such an 
attempt, or convert into satellites of unjust power, or in- 
struments of insolent pretensions ; those who, continue- 
ing to divide the children of the same father into two hos- 
tile classes, the one made up of the privileged few, and 
the other of the toiling majority, would say to the few: 
yours are the power and the enjoyments, the leisure 
and the wealth of the world ; and to the many, yours 
is the lot of submission, labor, wretchedness, hunger, 
and thirst: those will soon be put under the ban of 
sounder opinion, branded as felons against the dignity 
of mankind, and rebels warring against the things willed 
of God. Their doom is written out, and they cannot 
bury it under the abuses by which they may yet, for a 
time, be allowed to profit. Whether, therefore, we look 
beyond, or go down within, ourselves, to question the 
mysterious instinct of a futurity, here and hereafter, 
inherent hi each creature, every impulse warns us that 
a great reform is in progress in the world. Social life, 
hampered by a state which, as a noble poet has sung, 
'• is not in the harmony of things," leaps with impatient 
energy from its restraint. The wrappings, which 
swathed it in its infancy, are crumbling fast under the 



23 

breath of time, and the future opens a wider field to its 
statelier course. A twofold process of destruction and 
regeneration, the latter not apparent to him who does 
not search below the surface, is slowly working its way- 
through society. It repudiates time-worn institutions, 
and discards the ideas that vivified them before reason 
had reached a higher and a purer notion of right. New 
feelings and new thoughts proclaim a new era in 
human affairs. The voices that wander from the ruins 
of the past bring to the present generations strange 
sounds that admonish, and mystic words that encourage, 
them on their onward path. Full of fervency and trust, 
they advance to that quarter of the heavens whence 
the light is radiating, leaving behind them the spectres 
of things that have been, gibbering in congenial night. 
They cannot, if they choose, retrace their steps. " There 
is a divinity that shapes their end;" and its providential 
power compels them to advance. What matter the 
perils of the march, and the weariness of the road ? 
They know that the visions of glory burst not on the 
patriarch's eye, until after the trials and journeyings of 
the arduous day ; and the ladder that bears the ascend- 
ing races of mankind towers before their sight, till its 
topmost round is lost in the mystic splendors of heaven! 
The shout of the crusader again is heard — God wills it! 
For this earth is one holy land, in which sacred wars 
are yet to be fought in behalf of man and of his happi- 
ness. Genius, too, — eloquence and song — inspirits 
them with its prophet tones. From the mountain's 
height it points to the far off land, where the genera- 
tions shall rest, after their passage through the desert of 
life ; while our posterity, at some future day, tenants of 



24 

that happy land, will hand from age to age, with the 
memory and names of the workers of our indepen- 
dence, the memory and names of those who cheered 
their fathers in their weary pilgrimage to the shrines of 
a loftier freedom and a higher civilization. 






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